At the nearby docks, boats creaked on the rising tide, and a halyard clink-clink-clinked against a steel mast.
The Samaritan-thing directed its attention once more to the carousel.
Out of the west came a drumming different from – and louder than – the rain.
The beast turned toward the Ferris wheel, tilting its face up, peering into the bottomless black sky, raising its plump white hands, as though either seeking the source of the drumming or preparing to fend off an assault.
Out of the swarming darkness above the harbour, birds descended once more, not merely eight or ten, but a hundred birds, two hundred, three hundred, seagulls and pigeons and sparrows and blackbirds and crows and hawks, even several enormous and startlingly prehistoric-looking blue heron, beaks open but producing no sound, a river of feathers and small shiny eyes, pouring down over the Ferris wheel, along the promenade, splitting into two streams to pass the demon, and then rejoining in a single surging mass to disappear east between the shops and arcades, and still they came, a hundred more and then a hundred behind them, and hundreds arcing down after them, as though the sky would disgorge birds forever, the drumming of frantic pinions reverberating off every hard surface with such formidable volume that it was reminiscent of the freight-train rumble of a medium-magnitude earthquake.
On the carousel, Tommy felt the vibration of the wings, waves of pressure against his face and against his marvelling eyes, and his tympanic membranes began to flutter in sympathy, so that it felt as though the wings themselves, not merely the sound of them, were in his ears. The humid air carried the faint ammonia scent of damp feathers.
He remembered something that Del had said earlier in the night: The world is full of strange stuff Don’t you watch ‘The X Files’?
Although the spectacle of the birds left Tommy as clueless as he was wonderstruck, he suspected that Del understood what was happening, that what was deepest mystery to him was as clear as rainwater to her.
With the apparently infinite flock swooping around the demon, it turned away from the Ferris wheel, and stared east toward where the birds disappeared into the night past the Balboa Pavilion. It hesitated. Took a step in that direction. Stopped. Took another step.
As though finally interpreting the winged visitation as a sign that it could not ignore, the beast broke into a run, drawn by the birds in the night ahead of it, encouraged by the birds rocketing past on both sides of it, harried by the birds behind it. The torn raincoat flapped like great tattered wings, but the Samaritan-thing remained earthbound, borne east by birds and bird shadows.
For perhaps a minute after the Samaritan-thing passed out of sight, the birds continued to descend from the stormy sky above the Ferris wheel to the west, sail along Edgewater Avenue past the carousel, and disappear to the east. Gradually the flock grew thinner, until it ended with a few blackbirds, two gulls, and a single blue heron at least three feet tall.
The blackbirds abruptly broke from their pell-mell eastward flight, spiralled over the dining terrace as if battling one another, and then fell to the promenade, where they fluttered on the wet concrete as though stunned.
The two seagulls landed on the pavement, stumbled forward, flopped on their sides, squawked in distress, sprang to their feet, and wobble-walked in circles, bobbing their heads, apparently dazed and confused.
Stalk-legged and ungainly in appearance, the giant blue heron was nevertheless a graceful creature – except in this instance. It tottered off the promenade onto the dining terrace, weaving around the boles of the palm trees, curling and bending its long neck as if the muscles were so loose that it couldn’t hold its head up, in general performing as if inebriated.
One by one the blackbirds stopped flopping on the concrete, hopped onto their feet, shook themselves, spread their wings, and soared into the air.
The pair of gulls regained their composure. They also took wing and disappeared into the deep black sky above the harbour.
Having regained its equilibrium, the heron sprang onto one of the tables on the dining terrace and stood erect, its head held high, surveying the night on all sides, as if surprised to find itself in this place. Then it, too, departed.